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Neil Daly asks whether the blue carbon method could redress much of the damage to Western Port caused by a century of drainage works and land clearing. Photo: Greg Brave
By Neil Daly
IT WOULD seem the issues I raised in A bolt from the blue, The Cyan Way and Time to walk with nature were on the right track when it comes to carbon sequestration.
In these articles, I indicated how some of Western Port’s foreshore lands could once more become carbon sinks and, on a smaller scale, replicate the natural carbon capture processes the Koo Wee Rup swamp and coastal wetlands once provided.
IT WOULD seem the issues I raised in A bolt from the blue, The Cyan Way and Time to walk with nature were on the right track when it comes to carbon sequestration.
In these articles, I indicated how some of Western Port’s foreshore lands could once more become carbon sinks and, on a smaller scale, replicate the natural carbon capture processes the Koo Wee Rup swamp and coastal wetlands once provided.
Since 1893, when the swamp draining works were completed, in this area alone countless tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions have entered the atmosphere, and it has taken us until 2021 to realise it’s time to redress this situation.
Be it because of COP26 or the realisation that the community is looking for leadership on ways to reach net zero emissions, the Federal Government has released the Blue carbon method: proposed new method under the Emissions Reduction Fund.
Be it because of COP26 or the realisation that the community is looking for leadership on ways to reach net zero emissions, the Federal Government has released the Blue carbon method: proposed new method under the Emissions Reduction Fund.
“In late 2020, the Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction tasked the Clean Energy Regulator with developing a blue carbon method under the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).
“Eligible projects under this method will introduce tidal flows to completely or partially drained coastal wetland ecosystems. This is done by removing or modifying part of a tidal restriction mechanism such as a sea wall, bund, drain or tidal gate.
“A blue carbon project achieves carbon abatement by:
In calling for public submissions, the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee states: “The proposed method would enable projects that store carbon in biomass and soils and avoid emissions through the establishment of coastal wetland ecosystems to generate Australian Carbon Credit Units.”
“Eligible projects under this method will introduce tidal flows to completely or partially drained coastal wetland ecosystems. This is done by removing or modifying part of a tidal restriction mechanism such as a sea wall, bund, drain or tidal gate.
“A blue carbon project achieves carbon abatement by:
- increasing the carbon stored in soil and vegetation; and
- avoiding emissions from soils as they are rewetted, or as freshwater wetlands are returned to saline wetlands.
In calling for public submissions, the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee states: “The proposed method would enable projects that store carbon in biomass and soils and avoid emissions through the establishment of coastal wetland ecosystems to generate Australian Carbon Credit Units.”
The poster, Carbon Sequestration by Judith Kirkman, has just been released. With illustrations and explanatory text, it summarises some key issues associated with carbon capture and offers an insight into what needs to be done to help launch Western Port’s blue future.
Harking back to ‘A bolt from the blue’, it would seem the work carried out by Associate Professor Peter Macreadie and his team at the Blue Carbon Lab, Deakin University, has been worthwhile and that the humble teabag has given up its carbon secrets to the Federal Government.
I dare say I’ll never know “what the teabag said”, but this new proposal has prompted me to keep searching, for there’s sure to be another plan out there somewhere.
Sure enough, there is and now there’s a poster as well.
The plan is called Protecting Victoria’s Environment – Biodiversity 2037 and, given its purpose is to “stop the decline of our native plants and animals and improve our natural environment”, it should be added to the list in my article, Sifting the plans in play.
I dare say I’ll never know “what the teabag said”, but this new proposal has prompted me to keep searching, for there’s sure to be another plan out there somewhere.
Sure enough, there is and now there’s a poster as well.
The plan is called Protecting Victoria’s Environment – Biodiversity 2037 and, given its purpose is to “stop the decline of our native plants and animals and improve our natural environment”, it should be added to the list in my article, Sifting the plans in play.
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To all from across Victoria, welcome back to Western Port.
If you have a moment, send a message to your MPs, for the elections are not far away, suggesting that Western Port and its region needs an ecosystem-based business management plan to help it achieve a sustainable, net zero emissions future.
If you have a moment, send a message to your MPs, for the elections are not far away, suggesting that Western Port and its region needs an ecosystem-based business management plan to help it achieve a sustainable, net zero emissions future.
doesn’t reply to correspondence.
I note that the federal government talks about "blue" to include carbon capture and storage - a system which has been proved time-and-again to be ridiculously expensive and ineffective in almost all circumstances. Not the same thing at all.
This is surely one of the most exciting and important confirmations of the value of wetlands like Westernport.
If only the work of Prof Macreadie and Deakin’s Uni’s Blue Carbon Lab https://www.bluecarbonlab.org/ was funded by the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Morrison govt continues to waste in a dishonest and useless effort to prop up the development of failed CCS technologies. The purpose of CCS— to prolong the burning of coal and the use of fossil fuels— depends on the unproven technology of capturing carbon emissions. Using unknown quantities of freshwater and fracking chemicals, the plan is to then pipe and store CO2 forever, in specially drilled cavities several kms beneath the seabed.
I guess the confusion that exists between natural carbon biosequestration processes studied by the Blue Carbon Lab, and the outlandish lies about the ‘potential’ for CCS Carbon Capture and Storage technologies to solve the world’s climate and energy problems might be inevitable, as long as the Aus govt misrepresents the potential of the CCS industry, clinging to its development as a means of prolonging the coal and fossil fuels industries…
But these two opposing fields of research could not be more at odds with each other.
According to the work of Professor Macreadie, wetlands like Westernport can store carbon at a rate 40 times greater than tropical rainforests.
For this reason, it’s inevitable that the brilliant work of the Blue Carbon lab will continue to advance long after CCS has been dumped and abandoned for the enormous wasted pipe dream that the development of Carbon Capture and Storage CCS technologies will always be.
For now, the Aus govt continues to invest billions of dollars into CCS, while the real Blue Carbon potential in carbon trading schemes of wetlands like Westernport, continues to elude us, rather than becoming the enormous regional economic contributor that it could be.
It’s wonderful to see Westernport’s potential confirmed by post grad students from Deakin’s Blue Carbon lab visiting Woolleys Beach at Crib Point, to collect seagrass for their wetland regeneration projects and studies in biosequestration. But this work has proven itself to be worthy of so much more attention and investment .
For now, we’ll have to satisfy ourselves by promoting the work of the Blue Carbon Lab with one or two of those posters… did you say where they’re available Neil?
What a great Christmas present for our imperilled PM.
In contrast are